A Noble Fight, but Olympia Takes the First Round
North Yakima finished second in Washington's first state capital election, with no city winning a majority—setting up a bitter rematch and a referendum on railroad-town politics.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
THE CAPITAL CONTEST. The state capital will remain where it is for another year, no place receiving a majority vote. Olympia stood first in the race, North Yakima second and Ellensburgh third. The large vote received by Olympia from the east side of the mountains was an astonisher. Her workers were early in the field, had plenty of money and placed it lavishly. They were old hands in the matter of politics and intrigue.
North Yakima stands to-day before the people in a better attitude than before the race. She has made a noble fight and has been advertised in a way that will prove most beneficial. The contest will be repeated a year from this date when we will up and at them again, stronger and better equipped for the fight than ever. The country will have been settled up and the vacant lands placed under cultivation. Many fine buildings contemplated and under construction will have been finished; streets graded and drives laid out; our thousands of shade trees will make a more attractive appearance with age and added foliage; Yakima will without doubt then have a cross road, and Ellensburgh, recognizing our greater strength for the race, will see the advisability of concentrating her strength on Yakima and thus assure the removal of the capital to a central location, where in justice it belongs.
Under the headline 'An Unmanly Attack,' The Yakima Herald complained that voters had punished North Yakima as a 'railroad town' even though the railroad had already sold its interests there and left the people to work out their own destiny. It accused Olympia's workers of flooding the country with false and misleading circulars against the constitution and against North Yakima's capital bid.
“North Yakima stands to-day before the people in a better attitude than before the race. She has made a noble fight and has been advertised in a way that will prove most beneficial.”
The 1889 capital campaign was boosterism with a ballot: Yakima's backers promised a central, prosperous city and blamed Olympia's money and intrigue when they lost. The same grammar—civic pride, regional rivalry, claims that the other side cheated—still shapes local politics.
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